Will it blend…?
So, intrigued by some of the stuff I saw @ FOTB I’ve been playing a little with the latest beta of Microsoft’s Expression Blend and trying to get my head around what exactly it does and how.
There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of info or tutorials around at the moment (other than the few that come with it and a couple of handy ones @ ExpressionBlend.com), so I’ve been pretty much making it up as I go along. The result of my first little expriments is this simple analog clock app…
As I don’t really know if I’m doing this the right way, and to perhaps help others just starting, I’ve made a video walkthough of the creation of the clock and put the source code up for you to have a look at, if anyone knows a ‘better’ way of making this please comment (sorry about the bored cockney voiceover, it’s scary hearing myself speak! 
)
(Edit - just noticed the right click pop-ups don’t show up in the video, sorry about that, must be a Camtasia issue. I’ll try to fix it if I do another video)
UPDATE - 31/01/07 -
Due to popular demand (well, errr, Roger anyway ) the video is now available as a downloadable WMV also. Enjoy.
January 30th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Thanks for your tut. It’s a nice help, but unfortunately your video needs too much RAM. I tried it on to computers (the better one has 1GB Ram and 3Ghz CPU), and the screen turns suddenly red in the middle of the video until the browser crashes (tried IE and Firefox). So I never got farer than the part were a resource was created in blend.
January 30th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Roger,
odd, it works fine for me on my crappy old laptop. I’ll see if I can find the original and put it up for download.
A
January 31st, 2007 at 1:43 pm
It would be really very, very great if you could manage to put it up for download. In fact, there’s a chance that I’m not the only one with that problem. I’ve tried it on a 3rd computer today, and the same problem occurred.
Anyway, I would like to thank you very much for your contribution and help
February 1st, 2007 at 9:24 am
So happy, the wmv worked perfectly, and finally I could see the important part where it comes to VS.
Thanks again!
January 30th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
[…] * It’s not really covered in depth but they seem to do the actual layout design in Blend. Having been quite excited about Blend before it’s launch and in turn quite disappointed with it when I tried the first release, this seems to sum up the problem. Designers will not use Blend as a design tool, period, end of story. It’s an odd bastard child that sits somewhere between being too geeky for designers (loads of panels and event lists) and not geeky enough for developers (no code??)… it’s rather like the old days of clunky flash components and seems to me to be good for one thing, filling in and ticking little boxes to join the code and design up… an important task no doubt but who’s the tool intended for? […]